I have visited the original Empire State Building, at the corner of Broadway and Bleeker Street in New York City.
There was also the house where Lincoln died, across from Ford’s Theater in DC, including the “rubber room” (so-called because drawings of Lincoln’s death showed so many people present that the walls must have expanded to fit them all).
I’ve been there plenty of times, and parked in the garage.
My contributions:
The Conference House/Bently Manor – site of a conference on September 11(!), 1776 between Bejamin Franklin, John Adams, and Edward Rutledge for the Americans and a team of British negotiators lead by Lord Howe, in which they tried to avoid the American Revolution. They met for three hours, and the Americans rejected Howe’s terms. This is one of those events you never hear about in history classes. The house is located near the southern tip of Staten Island.
Pilgrim Monument – most people don’t realize that the Pilgrims didn’t land at Plymouth Rock in Plymouth – they first landed at present-day Provincetown on Cape Cod, Massachusetts and briefly considered settling there, but then decided to look for more substantial land. (They signed the Mayflower Compact in Provincetoen Harbor, not at Plymouth)Today there’s a tower commemorating the landing at the highest point in Provincetown, constructed with stoes from all the Massachusetts towns (they’re labeled on the inside, if you choose to climb to the top)
I delivered a phone book to the house where Amelia Earhart grew up.
I traveled to install a video projector there.
A close friend of my parents lost her mother and father in the Hyatt Regency skybridge collapse.
And a local mariachi band, all female, lost four of six members that had gone to KC to play a gig there. On Thursday I’d seen them play at the Mexican Fiesta in Topeka, and just over twentyfour hours later most of them were dead.
I’ve been to the building in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, where Fred Gaisberg set up the first recording studio ever in the UK.
Later on, he helped to build a recording studio in a house up in north London that is probably somewhat better known.
I have visited Castleton, VT-birthplace of “Colonel” Drake-the first man to drill for oil in the USA! I also have visited the Cobb’s Corner Inn (Sharon, MA), where George Washington slept for the night.
They let civilians into Fort Leavenworth with just an ID, so I would think it wouldn’t be much, if any, more restrictive to get into Lakehurst.
My contribution: I’ve been to the ‘Day the Music Died’ crash site north of Clear Lake, Iowa. It’s a long hike and there’s not much there and it’s on private land.
I’ve visited a few old pa sites and battlegrounds around New Zealand. Probably the most impressive is Te Porere. It’s on a desolate hillside in the shadow of Mount Ngauruhoe and you can walk around all the earthworks. It’s well worth a visit.
The Quantrill’s Raid 150th anniversary is coming up – does that take it out of the “forgotten/neglected” category?
I sailed through the Surigao Strait forty years after the US navy blasted the Japanese there, the last capping of the t in history. I thought “I’d hate to be coming through here getting shot at like that!”
I visited the Fallen Timbers battlefield outside Toledo Ohio. It had been fought in a forest that had been knocked down by a tornado, hence the name; and the Indians, not wanting to get peritonitis from abdominal wounds, abstained from eating. Mad Anthony Wayne let them starve for days until attacking. I remember thinking “I’d hate to go in there!”
Cowardice abroad, that’s me.
Ha! Not “forgotten or neglected” here! In my little neighborhood, for example, there are several privately installed plaques that say “so and so hid out here during Quantrill’s Raid, but was gravely wounded…”. There are walking-tour maps readily available.
It’s enough a part of the local consciousness that, when a friend who has lived here for most of her fifty years mentioned that she worked in a local McDonalds decades ago when it was at the edge of town (but now the city is much larger), I joked, “Yeah, I heard that that was the only McDonald’s in Lawrence that survived Quantrill’s Raid!,” and everyone laughed.
I’ve been to Merdon Castle (this was a long time ago in my youth, and I was trespassing, as the land is privately owned). Merdon Castle is the place where King Cynewulf of the West Saxons was murdered c790AD, and Aethelred and Alfred (the Great) were defeated by the Danes in 871AD.
I once drove over a hundred miles out of my way to see Lucy the Elephant - and I’m glad I did. It was completely worth the visit.
One surprising thing is Lucy is in the middle of a residential neighbourhood. You’ll be driving by ordinary suburban houses and then there’ll be this giant elephant.
I’ve been to the spot where Leo Frank was lynched.
I’ve also been to a hotel in Utah where Ted Bundy kidnapped and killed one of his victims.
There’s not a lot of tourist traffic at either place.
It’s not out of my way at all, I live 5 minutes from there, but it’s definitely a pretty obscure site. It’s right on a major street in DC but it’s very small (roughly the size of a single city block) and you’d never know it was there, even if you drove right past it.
I’ve been to Titusville, PA, where the first oil well was drilled by Colonel Drake. There’s a park and museum commemorating the event, of course.
After that, I went to Pithole, PA, the world’s first oil boom 'n bust town. Check out these stats:
May 1865: No town, 0 residents
July 1865: 2,000 residents
September 1865: 15,000 residents
December 1865: 20,000 residents and 54 hotels
December 1866: 2,000 residents
January 1870: 237 residents
August 1877: Town charter was revoked
1879: Remnants of city was sold back to the county for $4.37
Wasn’t able to make it to the visitor center as it’s only open during the summer.
I’ve also been to Crawford Hill, NJ to view the telescope that discovered the Big Bang.
There’s an old building near my daughter’s apartment that has a couple of bulletholes in the side of it. You have to know what you’re looking for and duck under a fire escape to see 'em.
It was the bank in Northfield, MN… and also the site of the townspeople standing up to Jesse James and his gang.
As one site says: “We prefer to call this event THE GREAT NORTHFIELD ASS KICKIN,’ for it was on the streets of Northfield that the James/Younger gang were taken to task by your average citizens”.
I found a site with instructions on how to hike to the location where Carole Lombard was killed in a plane crash. Maybe next time I’m in Vegas I’ll make the trek.
I’ve heard that there is some preserved graffiti from World War II still on the Reichstag. When I was in Berlin I went all the way around the building; couldn’t find it.
I remembered another one. I took the tour down the steps inside the Washington Monument several years ago. As part of the fundraising to build it, states and other civic groups donated stones, carved to commemorate the donors, and they’re only visible on the inside. I don’t know if the Park Service even does that tour anymore.
